Construction Equipment Owner

Talked on the phone recently with Lars Ingerslev, owner of Competitive Asphalt Coatings Inc. in Norco, CA. We had set up time to do an interview (read the story in October/November Pavement) while he was on the road, driving to present a bid, and for some reason things weren’t happening; we weren’t connecting. Not at all unusual in my end of the business where I am constantly pulling contractors or manufacturers away from their daily efforts and frequently disrupting their daily schedule.

But Lars called back and here’s the deal: He’s an hour out of Norco, heading to the bid; his employee pulls into the yard to pick up the work order, but the work order isn’t there - though it was when Lars left the yard the night before. As Lars said, there are two types of employees in this situation. The employee who throws his hands up, gets frustrated and annoyed, and heads home, and the employee who says “Well, I know there was a job scheduled. How can I figure out what and where it is?” Luckily the second type of employee works for Competitive Asphalt Coatings, so he was on the phone with Lars as they figured out how to get the job done.

“Reminds me of the other day when we were paving 9,000 sq. ft. and our paver broke down,” Lars said before getting off the phone. “We were out there working with a Bobcat to get the paving done. It’s hot and we’re shoveling mix, but that’s our responsibility, you know? And one of my guys turned to me and said, ‘Lars, if it were easy everybody would be doing it’.”

Sorry folks, but that guy already has a job.

Part of the Bush Administration’s attempts to control illegal immigration is an initiative that requires an employer to investigate the legal status of employees who have triggered a “no match” notice. No matchletters are generated when a name and social security number reported on a W2 form do not match with government records; these letters are sent to employers when a certain percentage of their employees trigger a no match notice.

The government’s recent set of requirements for employers receiving no match letters is being challenged in federal court. To learn more about this issue read or listen to this story at NPR’s Marketplace, or check out the American Subcontractors Assocition website which has general information about the No-Match Rule and a Frequently Asked Questions page about the rule.

Each year, in addition to the weekly (almost daily) contact we have with contractors and manufacturers, Cygnus Business Media sends its editors into the field on what we call “reader calls.” We visit contractors, spend some time with them, either on a job or in their office, and just talk about their business, the industry, and whether Pavement, National Pavement Expo, and National Pavement Expo West serve their needs.

This is a great opportunity for us to make sure we’re on the right track, to learn about new trends, learn how work is done, and to gain some insights we might otherwise not have gained without a field visit. Many of our article ideas, seminar ideas, and any shifts in program or magazine emphasis are partly driven by these visits, so we appreciate them quite a bit. And the only qualification is the people we visit have to be subscribers to Pavement Maintenance & Reconstruction.

This summer three Midwest contractors took some time out of their busy schedules to talk with me a while about what they do. You’ll see articles in Pavement in the coming months about Allied Asphalt, Decatur, IL; Gilliland Excavating, Bloomington, IN; and RLH Sealcoating Co., Martinsville, IN, but until then just know these were valuable visits. They remind me of how differently companies approach this business, how successful so many different approaches can be, and how the underlying tone of most of the successful businesses we write about is a concern for the customer and an emphasis on job quality.

Sounds pretty obvious, I know, and how many companies out there would say they don’t have a concern for customers or don’t perform quality work. But some contractors, and I’d venture to say the ones who are most successful and who enjoy their business, practice what they preach, and these three reader calls provided perfect examples.

Pam Darst, for example, runs the sealcoating division of Allied Asphalt, and she personally calls each of the 150 repeat homeowner customers on her contact list to schedule sealcoating. A former cosmetician, she likes to make sure their driveways look perfect when she drives off, and they, in turn, pay her on the job or leave her a check if they aren’t going to be home. This approach has generated word-of-mouth growth of 20 or so customers a year.

At RLH Sealcoating Bob Hamblin is in a bit of a fix. Why? Because his customers like him. They like to talk with him, trust him to do good work, and one of the most frequent questions his wife, Joyce, gets when she calls to schedule jobs, is “Is Bob going to do the work?” Quite a nice reputation to have. Don’t get me wrong, his crew does just as good a job, but that doesn’t matter because his customers have known Bob for years and want Bob on the job.

And the same holds true for Brad Gilliland, known throughout the Bloomington area for not only tackling the tough jobs but doing a great job at them. His problem? Too much work. “I have a hard time saying ‘No’,” Brad says. At the time I visited his jobsite Gilliland Excavating was scheduled eight weeks out, “and that’s a very big concern. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to being busy but I’m so busy and I have so many people who want me to work for them, you can make people mad by not getting to their job quick enough,” he says. “But with our quality of work we rarely have a complaint.”

Quality, personal touch, reliability. Look for articles on these three companies in a future issue of Pavement, but at this point suffice it to say that a contractor could do much worse than following any of the blueprints these folks have laid out.

Every once in a while you read about a ridiculous study that makes you wonder why on Earth someone would want to/need to know that information. I just ran across one of those studies today. But after thinking about it a little bit I realized how this information impacts my Concrete Contractor readers.

The recent study found that Tippecanoe County in Indiana has a total of 355,000 parking spaces for 155,000 county residents. An article about the study goes on to say that parking lots contribute to pollution in our lakes and rivers and also increase urban heating. The article, however, offers essentially no suggestion for combating stormwater runoff pollution or the heat island effect. Concrete contractors hold the perfect solution to both these problems with pervious concrete.

As the green building movement grows, it’s important for the concrete industry to keep the general public informed of the ways concrete fits into green building. Pervious concrete is just one solution concrete offers customers looking to make their projects green. Spread the word!

Many contract sweepers have been experimenting with tracking via global positioning systems (GPS) for years - some even spending thousands of dollars to develop their own sweeping-focused GPS. And depending on which sweeping contractors you talk with, GPS can be a business-saving technology that improves job quality, employee performance, profits and customer confidence.

It might be expensive, and if you pay for too-detailed a service, you might be wasting money, but sweepers (and owners of other construction equipment, and insurance companies) have come to accept that GPS is valuable in pinpointing a truck or an action at a specific time and location.

Now the Illinois State’s Attorney’s office agrees, and they have a judge who supports them.

Last week Robert Anderson, a judge in Illinois’ DuPage County, ruled that evidence of a defendant turning his GPS switch on and then off can be used in his trial. According to the Illinois State’s Attorney Robert Berlin, defendant Eric Hanson turned his personal GPS system off before slaying four family members in September 2005 - then turned it back on while he was driving to the airport after the four people were killed. The GPS evidence will be used both to convict Hanson of the crime and to demonstrate premeditation.

Robert Miller, Hanson’s defense attorney, argued that the GPS information should not be admitted to trial and that even if admitted it does not prove “consciousness of guilt.”

Rising health care costs are on the minds of small business owners all over the country. It seems a nebulous problem, and proposed changes in the political world have only brought questions and contention. The city of San Francisco has tired of waiting for the state of California and the federal government to step up and make changes so it has taken matters into its own hands by creating Healthy San Francisco, a program that ensures health care for all the city’s uninsured residents.

I realize this program isn’t going to do much for the concrete contractors reading this blog who face the challenge of keeping employee health insurance costs from irreparably damaging their bottom lines, but I think it’s a program to keep your eye on. If a success, Healthy San Francisco can offer a model on which future health insurance programs could be based. If it fails, the mistakes learned from the program can be addressed in future attempts at similar programs.

San Francisco does not plan on increasing taxes to fund this program, instead it plans to redirect the $200 million tax dollars currently spent on the uninsured and use it for preventative medicine. The city has also come up with a plan that discourages businesses from dropping their health insurance coverage for employees, as this would overburden the system — the basis of this discouragement is currently being challenged and will be examined by the state’s legal system in the coming months.

I welcome your comments on this issue, and will keep you abreast of challenges and successes that arise from this program.

Jared Everett, owner of Everett Services and educational leader of the “Managing Employees for Profit & Productivity,” and “Strengthen Your Sales & Customer Service Skills” seminars at National Pavement Expo West is the latest guest on the Construction Equipment Owner’s podcast.

Jared gives us a sneak peak into the issues he will be covering in his educational sessions as well as some tips on what business owners need to do to improve employee productivity.

 Construction Equipment Owner's Podcast - Jared Everett [6:45m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (558)

From time to time I’ll alert you to information you might put to use - some free and some not. We’ll start you out with a freebie (though your tax dollars have really already funded it) to get you hooked.

The second edition of the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) popular Pavement Preservation Toolbox CD is now available, and if you’re looking to start or enhance your pavement maintenance library this would be a great addition. Designed to help state and local agencies manage their investment in highways, the toolbox CD contains a wealth of information on cutting-edge technologies and practices in pavement preservation.

Included is the Caltrans Maintenance Technical Advisory Guide; recent FHWA technical memos on pavement preservation; the National Cooperative Highway Research Program reports on pavement preservation; pavement preservation publications from the Asphalt Emulsion Manufacturers Association, International Slurry Surfacing Association, Asphalt Recycling and Reclaiming Association; and more, including links to some darn good informational websites.

To obtain a copy of the free CD, contact your local FHWA Division office or Joe Gregory in the FHWA Office of Asset Management, 202-366-1557 (email: joseph.gregory@fhwa.dot.gov). Some of the info might not apply to some pavement maintenance businesses, but some of it will…and hey, it’s free.

One of the world’s most interesting and famous concrete structures is currently undergoing a $29 million repair effort. Concrete repair contractors are currently focusing on numerous cracks in the facade of New York City’s Guggenheim Museum. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, the concrete structure has experienced cracks in its facade since opening in 1959. Be sure to check out the multimedia graphic that shows each crack in the building.

Every once in a while I’ll pass along some insights provided by contractors, just to offer a sense on the state of the market. Generally I’ll pass this information along without identifying the contractor or the specific market, but hopefully it will offer some insights into what’s going on out there, at least anecdotally or regionally.

For the first “state of the market” report we turn to Rocky Mountain Region, where winter can’t come too early if you’re a skier (or ski lodge owner) but can never come too late if you’re putting down hot mix. A phone call from a veteran contractor in that region of the western United States reports he’s suddenly contending with bigger paving contractors for mid-size jobs, such as overlays of bank parking lots, and that at least one local Big Paver (read HMA producer and/or highway paver) has laid off one of its paving crews.

We haven’t heard much of that this year (so far, anyway), but I’m not surprised at all. As I reported a few days ago, construction is doing fine – except for the areas these Big Guys lean on for work: residential, streets, and highways. And after 17 years writing about the paving and pavement maintenance industry it’s become clear that when work for the Big Guys gets squeezed they look elsewhere to generate cash flow. And can you blame them? The HMA producers and the big pavers not only have significant dollars tied up in plants and equipment, they usually have a large workforce to support. So they need money coming in, and they turn to whatever paving jobs are out there to get it.

Talk about tough competition! Here’s the guy who’s producing the mix now bidding jobs against his own customers. Obviously the HMA producer’s mix price to himself is going to be less than the price to the paver customer, so his bid will be lower too. So there’s no question this shift by the Big Guys does impact the small-to-mid-sized paving contractors, who also have their own bills to pay.

There are a number of ways to fight this, the most obvious being lowering your bid to get the job at a reduced profit level. But that’s probably not the best way to go considering the HMA producer/paver can probably always go lower than you can. The thing to keep in mind, while you’re fighting this infusion of unexpected competition, is that these Big Guy pavers are not interested in that mid-sized paving work for the long haul. They want jobs requiring long pulls that place a huge volume of mix, so even if they’re causing you some problems they aren’t going to be causing them forever.

And don’t forget parking lots are your business! You know the problems and pitfalls better than they do. Plus (and this is not taking a shot at the Big Guy pavers) the work you do is likely of a higher quality simply because you and your crews are used to working around light poles and islands, and you’re used to fine-tuning the paving to keep that commercial client happy.

Any contractors interested in relating the state of their market – in any segment of the market – can just comment on this entry, give me a call (708-354-7039), or drop me an e-mail at allan.heydorn@cygnusb2b.com.